Northrup and her husband spent two years in couples therapy, but what she really wanted to know was how the “normal” in their relationship stacked up against other people’s. “I pictured more passion, more fun, more love,” she says. Four years ago, Northrup, a 41-year-old San Diego mother of three, moved out because her marriage of 15 years wasn’t what she hoped it would be. “It was very eye opening how simple, tiny things can make a huge impact,” says Northrup, who conceived of “The Normal Bar” after a crisis in her own relationship. The authors found that certain behaviors correlated with high satisfaction among couples: Happy couples often go on date nights, call each other pet names, hold hands, kiss passionately, give each other back rubs and say “I love you.” In the end it didn’t much matter, because couples who fell in love slowly were just as happy as those who were thunderstruck.Īs to the question of whether to marry your opposite or someone just like you, among those couples who are very similar, 95 percent are “extremely happy,” which should make that eHarmony guy smile as he counts his vacation homes. And while only 28 percent of women said they fell in love at first sight, 48 percent of men said they did. So, what were these anonymous survey-takers willing to disclose about their most intimate relationships? To start, 66 percent of them believe their partner is their soulmate. (Credit: Megan Baker Photography) (For reprints contact: Ellen Folan, ONE TIME USE, NO SALES (MEGAN BAKER PHOTOGRAPHY/MEGAN BAKER PHOTOGRAPHY) HANDOUT IMAGE: Authors of "The Normal Bar." From left: Pepper Schwartz, Chrisanna Northrup and James Witte. As Witte, who heads George Mason University’s Center for Social Science Research, put it, the survey results reflect the views of “the people likely to buy the book.” (That is, educated, media-savvy, middle-aged folk who are mostly women.) The information was gathered via Web surveys promoted on Huffington Post, Reader’s Digest, AOL and AARP. Only 15 percent say they’ve had an affair, though the numbers rise when the question is phrased in terms of “sex outside your current relationship.” Then 33 percent of men and 19 percent of women admitted cheating.īut before we dive under the covers, we should say, as co-authors Chrisanna Northrup, Pepper Schwartz and James Witte note, that this is not an academic study based on a random, representative sample of the population. ![]() The results show that most people (74 percent) are happy in their relationship. The latest attempt to find out what’s going on in everybody else’s relationships is “ The Normal Bar,” a book based on surveys of more than 70,000 people about their marital satisfaction. And what you want, with every yearning, lust-filled fiber of your being, is to go to sleep. You, meanwhile, are silently fuming as you fold your fifth load of laundry, still sour from this morning’s fight about who was supposed to pack the kids’ lunches and whose idea it was to have this many kids in the first place. ![]() What if that’s what everyone’s doing? Everyone except you. ![]() What if it’s as bad as you think? What if behind the picket fence and brocade curtains, your neighbors really are holding hands by the fire? They’re calling each other “sweetheart” and talking about their feelings before heading to the bedroom for another round of magic-making.
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